NB: Data from IMS Health. Figures reported are in $US and collected from July 2013 - June 2014.

Left: The Top 20 US Drugs listed by Monthly Prescription (units) and Right: The Top 20 US drugs listed by total sales ($). Please take a look at the column totals and remember that this is only the top 20, only for 12 months and only for the USA ($82,293,753,189).

Once again we have included some cheat sheets to view the indications and the drug groupings at a glance:

There’s a rather obvious problem with this list though – there is not a single generic drug included. Each one of the drugs listed are brand named drugs. Some notable exceptions are:

1. metformin

2. clopidogrel and

3. atorvastatin.

One should note that around 8 out of 10 drugs in the US are written for generic drugs and according to Pharmacy sources 15 of the 20 most prescribed agents are generic drugs.